Joss Whedon top 20

Buffy: 'The Gift'

Buffy: 'The Gift'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 5, Episode 22 'The Gift' (2001)"You're just a girl," an astonished stranger tells Buffy, after she's saved them from a vampire attack. "That's what I keep saying," she responds quietly. An episode in which Buffy sacrifices herself to save the world was always going to be moving, but it's the ways in which Whedon ties it back to the show's history, and what Buffy's destiny has always meant to her, that make it iconic. Some fans will argue that the series would have been better off ending here, and while we like the next two seasons too much to agree, it is physically impossible to watch the final five minutes of 'The Gift' without getting shivers.

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Buffy: 'Nightmares'

Buffy: 'Nightmares'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1, Episode 10 'Nightmares' (1997)Looking through Buffy's admittedly shaky first season, many would pick out its season finale, 'Prophecy Girl' as Whedon's personal highlight. But 'Nightmares', which sees Buffy and her friends experiencing their own worst fears in waking life, is the richest and most painful. For all the spiders and clowns running amok, the worst nightmare of all is Buffy's absent father casually telling her that she's a disappointment and the sole reason for her parents' divorce.

Buffy: 'The Gift'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 5, Episode 22 'The Gift' (2001)"You're just a girl," an astonished stranger tells Buffy, after she's saved them from a vampire attack. "That's what I keep saying," she responds quietly. An episode in which Buffy sacrifices herself to save the world was always going to be moving, but it's the ways in which Whedon ties it back to the show's history, and what Buffy's destiny has always meant to her, that make it iconic. Some fans will argue that the series would have been better off ending here, and while we like the next two seasons too much to agree, it is physically impossible to watch the final five minutes of 'The Gift' without getting shivers.

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Buffy: 'Nightmares'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1, Episode 10 'Nightmares' (1997)Looking through Buffy's admittedly shaky first season, many would pick out its season finale, 'Prophecy Girl' as Whedon's personal highlight. But 'Nightmares', which sees Buffy and her friends experiencing their own worst fears in waking life, is the richest and most painful. For all the spiders and clowns running amok, the worst nightmare of all is Buffy's absent father casually telling her that she's a disappointment and the sole reason for her parents' divorce.

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Buffy: 'Ted'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 11 'Ted' (1997)One of the few underrated Whedon-penned episodes, this is a skin-crawlingly disturbing story in which a jocular chap called Ted seduces Buffy's mother and gradually brainwashes her friends while terrorising her in private. Things get very dark very quickly, and while the robot reveal is inevitably slightly hokey, it's one of the best examples of a Buffy episode that takes a real-world situation (hating your divorced mother's new boyfriend) and expands it to supernatural extremes.

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Buffy: 'Innocence'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 14 'Innocence' (1998)But there's no better example of Whedon's supernatural-as-metaphor-for-life trademark than this devastating and pivotal episode, in which Buffy's brooding vampire boyfriend Angel (David Boreanaz) turns unrecognisably evil after they sleep together for the first time. It's packed with standout moments, from the brutal ("You've got a lot to learn about men, kiddo") to the badass (rocket launcher) to the touching (Giles reassuring Buffy that he's still proud of her.)

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Toy Story

Toy Story (1995) Just before Whedon went off to a self-described "low point" with Alien: Resurrection, he spent four months rewriting the script for Toy Story, fine-tuning structure, adding characters (notably fearful dinosaur Rex) and dropping in much of the final film's sharpest dialogue. If you listen hard, you can probably pick out which lines have the Whedon stamp.

Buffy: Graduation Day

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 3, Episode 21 & 22 'Graduation Day: Part One & Part Two' (1999)Where do we even begin with this? Buffy and Faith's climactic, cathartic fight to the death. Cordelia and Wesley's comically anticlimactic kiss. Angel half-draining Buffy's blood in the closest thing the pair would ever get to a second sex scene. The graduating Sunnydale class rising up en masse against the Mayor. "Fire bad, tree pretty." For an embodiment of Buffy's signature blend of sublime and ridiculous, this elegant and emotional season ender can't be beat.

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Angel: 'City Of'

Angel, Season 1, Episode 1 'City Of' (1999)Not everyone was convinced that Angel, who on Buffy always felt more like a plot device to provide the heroine with angst than a fully-fledged character, could carry his own show, and having him become a private detective in LA had the uncomfortable smack of Baywatch Nights to it. But we should have known better than to doubt Joss and his Buffy co-exec David Greenwalt, and this pilot - while it's lacking the key element of Alexis Denisof's Wesley - is a witty and complex introduction into what would become a wholly successful spinoff.

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Buffy: 'Hush'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, Episode 10 'Hush' (1999)The first of many stylistically experimental episodes, 'Hush' came out of Whedon's desire to experiment with a silent movie format. There's no dialogue at all for 27 minutes of the episode, after the entire town of Sunnydale is silenced by the malevolent Gentlemen, and the device pays off as much comedically as it does emotionally. The Gentlemen may also be the show's single most frightening villain; silent, grinning spectres who steal their victims' voices before cutting out their hearts.

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Angel: 'Sanctuary'

Angel, Season 1, Episode 19 'Sanctuary' (2000)Buffy's appearances on Angel were limited - thanks initially to a desire to keep the two shows distinct from one another and later to Buffy moving to a different network - but she's used especially well here as an antagonist. She's out for revenge on Faith, who's fled to Los Angeles after stealing Buffy's body and wreaking havoc in Sunnydale, but Angel has hope for Faith and refuses to turn her over. it's a crucial episode for Angel as an independent character, and daringly deconstructs fans' image of the idyllic Buffy/Angel romance.

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Buffy: 'Restless'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, Episode 22 'Restless' (2000)This episode is like the mentally unstable older sibling to 'Nightmares', once again trapping Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles in living embodiments of their own dreams. It's subtler and more disturbing than anything the show had done before, hinting both at Buffy's imminent death, the role of the First Slayer and the subsequent darkness that would envelop the Scooby gang. But there are moments of joy in the surrealism; the Cheese Man is a character that could only have come from the mind of Joss Whedon.